DREAMs of College: In Pursuit of Higher Education While Undocumented

• In Event: 4412 - Section on Latino/a Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 03. Latina/o/xs and Education

Abstract

While current policy facilitates the access of undocumented children and youth to K-12 education, there are no federal provisions to grant this population access to higher education. In states without tuition equity policies, illegality is one of the main obstacles for undocumented youth who want to go to college. Though the literature on undocumented college goers has grown in the last decade, much remains unknown about the role of place when it comes to the educational trajectories of undocumented youth. Through in depth, semi-structured interviews with undocumented college goers in Greater Boston, Massachusetts and in the Piedmont Triad and Research Triangle in North Carolina, this paper explores how undocumented Latinx youth living in contexts with divergent immigration histories, policies, and practices, decide to pursue higher education and navigate the college application process. In examining these divergent pathways to college, I argue that there is a link between the local contexts in which undocumented youth comes of age and how they approach the college application process. Moreover, this research shows that the saliency of immigration status in educational experiences can have long lasting effects on undocumented immigrant youth, especially as they graduate from college and incorporate into the labor market.

Author

• Alessandra Bazo Vienrich, University of Massachusetts-Boston